by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

The chief casualty of any war is a sense of genuine,
universal humanity. With the United States now at war
in Afghanistan, humanitarian considerations are in
short supply, except insofar as they can be used
propagandistically to muster further support for a
military strike. For this reason we have decided to
publish here an edited and adapted version of an essay
by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, which appeared in The Iranian
(Tehran) on June 20, 2001, and is reprinted as follows
with their permission. Makhmalbaf, who is Iran's most
celebrated film maker, and was a political prisoner
under the Shah, has made such important films as The
Cyclist and Kandahar both about Afghanistan.

The intimate portrait of Afghanistan that he provides
here should not be read primarily as a political and
historical document in these areas it is clearly
inadequate, for example in depicting the role of the
United States in forming the Mujahedin in its war
against the Soviets but rather as a deeply moral and
humanitarian account of the tragic circumstances of
the Afghan people and the callousness of the West. It
is thus a vivid portrayal of one of the world's great
human tragedies by one of its great artists imparting
a message desperately needed in our times. If you read
my article in full, it will take about an hour of your
time. In this hour, fourteen more people will have
died in Afghanistan of war and hunger and sixty others
will have become refugees in other countries. This
article is intended to describe the reasons for this
mortality and emigration. If this bitter subject is
irrelevant to your sweet life, please don't read it.

The World's View of Afghanistan

Last year I attended the Pusan Film Festival in South
Korea where I was repeatedly asked about the subject
of my next film. I responded, "Afghanistan."
Immediately I would be asked, "What is Afghanistan?"
Why is it so? Why should a country be so obsolete that
the people of another Asian country such as South
Korea have not even heard of it?  The reason is clear.
Afghanistan does not have a role in today's world. It
is neither a country remembered for a certain
commodity, nor for its scientific advancement, nor as
a nation that has achieved artistic honors. In the
United States, Europe, and the Middle East, however,
the situation is different and Afghanistan is
recognized as a peculiar country.

This strangeness, however, does not have a positive
connotation. Those who recognize the name Afghanistan
immediately associate it with smuggling, the Taliban,
Islamic fundamentalism, war with the Soviet Union, a
long time civil war, famine, and high mortality. In
this subjective portrait there is no trace of peace
and stability or development. Thus, no desire is
created for tourists to travel to or businessmen to
invest in Afghanistan. So why should it not be left to
oblivion? The defamation is such that one might soon
write in dictionaries that Afghanistan can be
described as a drug producing country with rough,
aggressive, and fundamentalist people who hide their
women under veils with no openings.

Add to all of that the destruction of the largest
known statue of Buddha that recently spurred the
sympathy of the entire world and led all supporters of
art and culture to defend the doomed statue. But why
did no one except UN High Commissioner for Refugees,
Sadoko Ogato, express grief over the pending death of
one million Afghans as a result of severe famine? Why
doesn't anybody speak of the reasons for this
mortality? Why is everyone crying aloud over the
demolition of the Buddha statue while nothing is heard
about preventing the death of hungry Afghans? Are
statues more cherished than humans in the modern
world? I have traveled within Afghanistan and
witnessed the reality of life in that nation. As a
filmmaker, I produced two feature films on Afghanistan
within a thirteen-year interval (The Cyclist, 1988 and
Kandahar, 2001). In doing so, I studied about ten
thousand pages of various books and documents to
collect data for the films.

Consequently I know of a different image of
Afghanistan than that of the rest of the world. It is
a more complicated, different, and tragic picture, yet
sharper and more positive. It is an image that needs
attention rather than forgetfulness and suppression.
But where is Sa'di to see this tragedy, the Sa'di
whose poem "All people are limbs of one body" is above
the portal to the United Nations? News headlines
matching a country's name must always be checked. The
image of a country presented to the world through the
media is a combination of facts about that country and
an imaginary notion that the people of the world are
supposed to have of that place. If some countries of
the world are supposed to be coveted places, it is
necessary that grounds be provided through the news.

What I've perceived is that unfortunately in today's
Afghanistan, except for poppy seeds, there is almost
nothing to spark desire. Thus Afghanistan has little
or no share in world news, and the resolution of its
problems in the near future is far-fetched. If like
Kuwait, Afghanistan had oil and surplus oil income, it
could also have been taken back in three days by the
Americans and the cost of the American army could have
been covered by that surplus income.

When the Soviet Union existed, Afghans received
Western media attention for fighting against
Communism. With the Soviet retreat and later
disintegration, why is the United States, which
supports human rights, not taking any serious actions
for ten million women deprived of education and social
activities, or for the eradication of poverty and
famine that is taking the lives of so many people? The
answer is because Afghanistan offers nothing to long
for. Afghanistan is not a beautiful young woman who
raises the heartbeat of her thousand lovers. And we
know that Sa'di was not speaking of our time when he
said "All people are limbs of one body."

The Tragedy of Afghanistan in Statistics

There has been no rigorous collection of statistics in
Afghanistan in the past two decades. Hence, all data
and numbers are relative and approximate. According to
these figures, Afghanistan had a population of twenty
million in 1992. During the past twenty years, about
2.5 million Afghans have died as a direct or indirect
result of war army assaults, famine, or lack of
medical attention. In other words, every year 125,000
or about 340 people a day, or 14 people every hour, or
1 in about every five minutes, have been either killed
or died because of this tragedy. This is a world
wherein the crew of that unfortunate Russian submarine
was facing death some months ago and satellite news
was reporting every minute of the incident. It is a
world that reported nonstop the demolition of the
Buddha statue.

Yet nobody speaks of the tragic death of Afghans every
five minutes for the past twenty years. The number of
Afghan refugees is even more tragic. According to more
precise statistics the number of Afghan refugees
outside of Afghanistan living in Iran and Pakistan is
6.3 million. If this figure is divided by the year,
day, hour, and minute, in the past twenty years, one
person has become a refugee every minute. The number
does not include those who run from north to south and
vice versa to survive the civil war.

I personally do not recollect any nation whose
population was reduced by 10 percent via mortality,
and 30 percent through migration, and yet faced so
much indifference from the world. The total number of
people killed and made refugees in Afghanistan equals
the entire Palestinian population, but even among us
Iranians our share of sympathy for Afghanistan does
not reach 10 percent of that for Palestine or Bosnia,
despite the fact that we have a common language and
border.

When crossing the border at the Dogharoon customs to
enter Afghanistan, I saw a sign that warned visitors
of strange looking items. These were mines. It read:
"Every twenty-four hours seven people step on mines in
Afghanistan. Be careful not to be one of them today
and tomorrow."  I came across more hard figures in one
of the Red Cross camps. The Canadian group that had
come to defuse mines found the tragedy simply too
vast; they lost hope and returned home. Based on these
same figures, over the next fifty years large numbers
of Afghans will step on mines before their land is
safe and livable. The reason is because every group or
sect has strewn mines against the other without a map
or plan for later collection. The mines were not set
in military fashion to be collected in peace. This
means that a nation has placed mines against itself.
And when it rains hard, surface waters reposition
these devices turning once safe remote roads into
dangerous paths.

These statistics reveal the extent of the unsafe
living environment in Afghanistan that leads to
continuous emigration. Afghans perceive their
situation as dangerous. There's constant fear of
hunger and death. Why shouldn't Afghans emigrate? A
nation with an emigration rate of 30 percent certainly
feels hopeless about its future. Of the 70 percent
remaining, 10 percent have been killed or died and the
rest (or 60 percent) were not able to cross the
borders or if they did, they were sent back by the
neighboring countries.

This perilous situation has also been an impediment to
any foreign presence in Afghanistan. A businessman
would never risk investing there unless he is a drug
dealer, and political experts prefer to fly directly
to Western countries. This makes it difficult to
resolve the crisis that Afghanistan is faced with.
This adds to the ambiguity of crisis in a country
burdened with such an enormous scope of tragedy and
ignorance on the part of the world.

I witnessed about twenty thousand men, women, and
children around the city of Herat starving to death.
They couldn't walk and were scattered on the ground
awaiting the inevitable. This was the result of the
recent famine. That same day Sadako Ogato also visited
these same people and promised that the world would
help them. Three months later, I heard on Iranian
radio that Madame Ogato gave the number of Afghans
dying of hunger to be a million nationwide.  I reached
the conclusion that the statue of Buddha was not
demolished by anybody; it crumbled out of shame. Out
of shame for the world's ignorance towards
Afghanistan. It broke down knowing its greatness did
no good. In Dushanbeh in Tajikistan I saw a scene
where 100,000 Afghans were running from south to
north, on foot. It looked like doomsday.

These scenes are never shown in the media anywhere in
the world. The war-stricken and hungry children had
run for miles and miles barefoot. Later on the same
fleeing crowd was attacked by internal enemies and was
also refused asylum in Tajikistan. In the thousands,
they died and died in a no man's land between
Afghanistan and Tajikistan and neither you nor anybody
else found out.

A Country with No Images

Afghanistan is a country with no images, for various
reasons. Afghan women are faceless which means ten
million out of the twenty million population don't get
a chance to be seen. A nation, half of which is not
even seen by its own women, is a nation without an
image. During the last few years there has been no
television broadcasting. There are only a few two-page
newspapers by the names of Shariat, Heevad and Anise
that have only text and no pictures. This is the sum
total of the media in Afghanistan. Painting and
photography have also been prohibited in the name of
religion. In addition, no journalists are allowed to
enter Afghanistan, let alone take pictures.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century there are no
film productions or movie theaters in Afghanistan.
Previously there were fourteen cinemas that showed
Indian movies, and film studios made small productions
imitating Indian movies, but that too has vanished.
In the world of cinema where thousands of films are
made every year, nothing is forthcoming from
Afghanistan. Hollywood, however, produced Rambo about
war in Afghanistan. The whole movie was filmed in
Hollywood and not one Afghan was included. The only
authentic scene was Rambo's presence in Peshawar,
Pakistan, thanks to the art of back projection! It was
merely employed for action sequences and creating
excitement. Is this Hollywood's image of a country
where 10 percent of the people have been decimated and
30 percent have become refugees and where currently
one million are dying of hunger?

The Russians produced two films concerning the memoirs
of Russian soldiers. The Mujahedin made a few films
after the Soviet retreat, which are essentially
propaganda movies and not a real image of the
situation of the past or present-day Afghanistan. They
are basically heroic pictures of a few Afghans
fighting in the deserts. Two feature films have been
produced in Iran on the situation of Afghan
immigrants, Friday and Rain. I made two films The
Cyclist and Kandahar. This is the entire catalogue of
images about Afghans in the Iranian and world media.
Even in TV productions worldwide there are a limited
number of documentaries. Perhaps, it is an external
and internal conspiracy or universal ignorance that
maintains Afghanistan as a country without an image.

Tribal Conflicts, Past and Present

Afghanistan emerged when it separated from Iran. It
used to be an Iranian province some 250 years ago and
part of Greater Khorasan province in the era of Nadir
Shah. Returning from India, one midnight, Nadir Shah
was murdered in Ghoochan. Ahmad Abdali, an Afghan
commander in Nadir Shah's army fled with a regiment of
four thousand soldiers. He declared independence from
Iran and thus Afghanistan was created.  In those days
it was comprised of farmers and overwhelmingly ruled
by tribes.

Since Ahmad Abdali belonged to the Pashtoon tribe,
naturally, he could not have been accepted as the
absolute authority by other tribes such as the Tajik,
Hazareh and Uzbek. Thus, it was agreed that each tribe
would be governed by its own leaders. The rulers
collectively formed a tribal federalism known as the
Loya Jirga. The Loya Jirga system reveals that not
only has Afghanistan never evolved economically from
an agricultural existence, it has never moved beyond
tribal rule, and has failed to achieve a sense of
nationalism.

An Afghan does not regard himself an Afghan until he
leaves his homeland. Then he is regarded with pity or
suffers humiliation. In Afghanistan, each Afghan is a
Pashtoon, Hazareh, Uzbek, or Tajik. In Iran, perhaps
except in the province of Kurdistan, we are all
Iranians first. Nationalism is the first aspect of our
perception of a common identity. But in Afghanistan
all are primarily members of a tribe. Tribalism is the
first aspect of their identity. This is the most
obvious difference between the spirit of an Iranian
and that of an Afghan.

Even in presidential elections in Iran, the
candidate's ethnicity has no national significance and
draws no special vote. In Afghanistan since the era of
Ahmad Abdali until today, as the Taliban rule over 95
percent of the country, the main leaders have always
been from the Pashtoon tribe. (Except for the nine
months of Habiballah Galehkani's rule known as Bacheh
Sagha and the two years of the Tajik Burhannuddin
Rabbani respectively, Tajiks have not otherwise held
power.)

During the making of Kandahar while I was in the
refugee camps at the border of Iran and Afghanistan, I
realized that even those Afghan refugees who have
lived in difficult camp conditions, did not accept
their Afghan national identity. They still had
conflicts over being Tajik, Hazareh, or Pashtoon.
Inter-tribal marriages still do not take place among
Afghans nor is there any business conducted between
them. And with the most minor conflict, the danger of
mass bloodshed prevails. I once witnessed the killing
of a member of one tribe, by a member of another, in
revenge for cutting in a bread line. In the Niatak
refugee camp (on the Iran-Afghanistan border) which
accommodates five thousand residents, it is not easy
for Pashtoon and Hazareh children to play with each
other.

This sometimes leads to mutual aggression. Tajiks and
Hazarehs find Pashtoons their greatest enemy on earth
and vice versa. None of them are even willing to
attend each other's mosques for prayers. We had
difficulty seating their children next to each other
to watch a movie. They offered a compromise wherein
Hazareh and Pashtoon children took turns watching.

Many diseases were prevalent in this camp and there
were no doctors. When a doctor was brought in from the
city, the camp residents didn't give priority to
treating those who were most ill. Only a tribal order
was accepted. They appointed a day for Hazareh
patients and another for Pashtoons. In addition, class
distinctions among the Pashtoons prevented them from
coming to the clinic on the same day.  In shooting
scenes that needed extras, we had to decide to choose
from among either Hazarehs or Pashtoons, though all of
them were refugees and both suffered the same misery.

Yet, tribal disposition came first in any decisions.
Of course, the majority were unfamiliar with cinema.
Like my grandmother, they thanked God for not having
stepped foot inside a movie theatre.  The reason for
Afghanistan's perpetual tribalism rests with its
agrarian economy. Each Afghan tribe is trapped in a
valley with geographical walls and is the natural
prisoner of a culture stemming from a mountainous
environment and farming economy. Cultural tribalism is
the product of farming conditions rooted in the deep
valleys of Afghanistan. Belief in tribalism is as deep
as those valleys.

The topography of Afghanistan is 75 percent
mountainous of which only 7 percent is suitable for
farming. It lacks any semblance of industry. The
country is solely dependent on farming, as grasslands
(in nondrought years) are the only resources
for economic continuity. Again, farming is the
foundation of this tribalism that in turn is the basis
for deep internal conflicts. This not only stops
Afghanistan from becoming a modern country it also
prevents this would-be nation from achieving a
national identity.

There is no intrinsic popular belief in what is called
Afghanistan and Afghans. Afghans are not yet ready to
be absorbed into a bigger collective identity called
the people of Afghanistan. Contrary to the misnomer of
religious war, the origin of disputes lies with tribal
conflicts. The Tajiks who fight the Taliban today are
both Muslim and Sunniùas are the Taliban. The
intelligence of Ahmad Abdali is yet to be appreciated
for having created the notion of tribal federalism. He
was smarter than those who fancy the ruling of one
tribe over all others or one individual over a nation,
when tribalism and the economic infrastructure was
still intact.

Pashtoons with a population of about six million make
up Afghanistan's largest tribe. Next are Tajiks with
about four million people, and third and fourth are
Hazarehs and Uzbeks with populations of about four
million and one to two million respectively. The rest
are small tribes such as the Imagh, Fars, Balouch,
Turkman, and Qezelbash.  The Pashtoons are mostly in
the south, the Tajiks in the north and the Hazarehs in
the central regions. This geographical concentration
in different regions will lead either to complete and
final disintegration or the continued connection from
the head of the tribe through the Loya Jirga system.

The only alternative to these two scenarios
necessitates changes in the economic infrastructure
and the replacement of a tribal identity with a
national one.  If we can elect a president in Iran
today, free from issues of ethnicity, it is because of
the economic transformation resulting from oil, at
least in the last century. The question is not the
quality or quantity of oil in the Iranian economy. The
point is that when oil enters the economy of a country
such as Iran, that was basically agricultural, it
changes the economic infrastructure and the role of
Iran becomes significant in political interactions. It
becomes an exporter of a valued raw material and in
return receives the surplus productions of industrial
countries.

This transformation changes the socioeconomic
infrastructure that in turn breaks the traditional
culture and creates a more modern one, exporting oil
and consuming the products of industrialized
countries. If we omit money as the symbolic medium,
then we have given oil in exchange for consumer
products. But Afghanistan has nothing but drugs to
exchange in the world market. Therefore, it has turned
back on itself and become isolated.

Perhaps, if Afghanistan had not separated from Iran
250 years ago, it would have had a different fate
based on its share of oil revenues.  The revenue from
opium that I will elaborate on later is far too
insignificant to be compared to revenue from Iranian
oil. In 2000, Iran's surplus income from the oil price
windfall exceeded $10 billion. Total sales of opium in
Afghanistan remained at $500 million.  Iran has played
its role in the world economy and by consuming the
products of others, has understood that we have
choices and have thus become somewhat more modern. But
for the Afghan farmer his world is his valleys and his
profession is farming when drought spares him.

Meanwhile a tribal system resolves his social
problems. Given that, he cannot have a share in the
world economy. How are grounds for his economic and
cultural transition to be provided to let him have a
share? In addition, $80 billion in the global drug
turnover depends on Afghanistan remaining in its
present situation without change because if change
prevails, that $80 billion is the first thing to be
threatened. Hence, Afghanistan is not supposed to
realize a considerable profit since that itself may
yield change for Afghanistan. Although Iran and
Afghanistan shared the same history some 250 years
ago, due to oil the history of Iran took a turn that
is impossible for Afghanistan to take for a very long
time.

Opium is the only product that Afghanistan offers to
the world. Yet both because of the nature of this
product and the insignificant amount of this tainted
national wealth, it cannot be compared to oil. If we
add the $500 million income from the sale of opium to
the $300 million from the sale of northern
Afghanistan's gas, and divide the total by the twenty
million population, the result is $40 per capita
annual income. If we further divide that figure by 365
days each Afghan would earn about ten cents a day or
the equivalent of the price a loaf of bread on normal
days.  But the country's annual earnings belong to the
government and the domestic criminal organizations and
it doesn't get divided fairly. This revenue,
therefore, is both insufficient to meet the needs of
people and too low to bring about significant change
in the economic, social, political, and cultural
infrastructure.

Why Have 30 Percent Emigrated?

Livestock breeders habitually move to resolve their
living problems. Urban residents and agricultural
farmers are less likely to move often. The main reason
for the Afghan livestock breeders' mobility is related
to the farming seasons. They constantly move to green
and warm areas to avoid dry lands and cold weather.
Movement is a natural reflex for livestock farmers.
The second reason is lack of a fixed occupation.
Afghans migrate to avoid death from unemployment.

Upon waking up each day, an Afghan has four burdens to
consider. First is his livestock and this depends on
drought not being an obstacle. Fighting for a group or
sect is his second concern and generally because of
employment he enters the army. Earning a living to
support his family is another reason why he moves and
if all else fails, he enters the drug business. The
extent of this last option is limited and the labor
options of a nation of twenty million people cannot
really be measured with a $500 million account accrued
from cultivating poppy seeds. Thus, characterizing the
people of Afghanistan as opium smugglers is unreal and
applies only to a very limited number.

Immunized Against Modernism

Amanullah Khan, who ruled in Afghanistan from
1919-1928, was a contemporary of Reza Shah and Kemal
Ataturk. On a personal level he was inclined towards
modernism. In 1924, Amanullah traveled to Europe,
returned with a Rolls Royce and made known his reform
program. The plan included a change in attire. He told
his wife to unveil herself and asked men to forego
their Afghan costumes for western suits. Contrary to
Afghan male custom, he prohibited polygamy.
Traditionalists immediately begin opposing Amanullah
modernizing. None of the agrarian tribes submitted to
these changes and rioting ensued against him.

Here, modernism without a socioeconomic basis, is but
a non-homogeneous imposition of culture on a tribal
society economically dependent on farming, and lacking
any industry, agriculture or even preliminary means of
exploiting its resources, not to mention prohibition
of inter-tribal marriages. This superficial,
formalistic and petty modernism served only as an
antibody to stimulate traditional Afghan culture,
making Afghanistan so immune to modernism that even in
the following decades it could not penetrate the
culture in a more rational form.

Even today, the preconditions for modernism, which
include exploiting resources and presenting cheap raw
materials in exchange for goods, have not been
created. The most advanced people in Afghanistan still
believe that Afghan society is not yet ready for
female suffrage. When the most progressive sect
involved in the civil war finds it too early for women
to vote it is obvious that the most conservative will
prohibit schooling and social activities to them. It
follows naturally that ten million women are held
captive under their burqas (veils).

This is Afghan society seventy years after Amanullah's
modernism aimed to impose monogamy on a male dominated
Afghanistan, whose only perception of family is the
harem. In 2001, polygamy is still an accepted fact by
women even in refugee camps on the Iran-Afghanistan
border. I attended two weddings among the Pashtoon and
Hazareh tribes and heard them wishing for more
prosperous weddings for the groom. At first I thought
it was a joke. In another case the bride's family
said: "If the groom can afford it, up to four wives is
indeed very good and it is a religious tradition as
well as helping a bunch of hungry people."

When I went to the camp in Saveh to record the wedding
music for Kandahar, I saw a two-year-old girl being
wedded to a seven-year-old boy. I never understood the
meaning of this. Neither could that boy or that little
girl, who was sucking on a pacifier, have made the
choice. Given this portrait of traditional society,
Amanullah's modernism seemed an overwhelming imitation
of another country. Of course, some people believe if
a woman changes her burqa into a less concealing veil,
she may be struck with God's wrath and turned into
black stone.

Perhaps, someone has to forcibly rid her of her burqa
so she'll realize that the assumption is untrue and
she can choose for herself.  There is another biased
viewpoint to Amanullah's modernism. In traditional
societies, the culture of hypocrisy is a form of class
camouflage. In Iranian society, wealthy traditional
families decorate the interior of their home like a
castle but keep the exterior looking like a shack, out
of fear of the poor. In other words, that aristocratic
nucleus needs to have a poor rustic shell.

Opposition to modernism is not necessarily expressed
by traditional organizations. Sometimes it is a
reaction by the poor against the rich. For the poor
society in Amanullah's time, while having horses as
opposed to mules was a symbol of honor and nobility, a
Rolls Royce was an insult to the poor. The war between
tradition and modernism is primarily the same as the
battle of the Rolls Royce and the mule. It is a war
between poverty and wealth.

Today, in Afghanistan the only modern objects are
weapons. The ubiquitous civil war that has created
jobs in addition to being a political/military action
has also become a market for modern weapons.
Afghanistan can no longer fight with knives and
daggers even though it lags behind the contemporary
age. The consumption of weapons is a serious matter.
Stinger missiles next to long beards and burqas are
still symbols of profound modernism that are
proportionate to consumption and modern culture.

For the Afghan Mujahed, weapons have an economic basis
that creates jobs. If all weapons are removed from
Afghanistan, the war ends and all accept that if there
were no more assaults on anyone, given the sub-zero
economic conditions, all of today's Mujahedin would
join the refugees in other countries. The issue of
tradition and modernism, war and peace, tribalism and
nationalism in Afghanistan must be analyzed with an
eye to the economic situation and employment crisis.
It has to be understood that there is no immediate
solution for the economic crisis in Afghanistan.

A long-term resolution is contingent on an economic
miracle and not on a nationwide military attack from
north to south or vice versa. Have these miracles not
happened time and again? Was the Soviet retreat not a
miracle? Was the sovereignty of the Mujahedin not a
miracle on their part? Was the sudden conquest of the
Taliban not a miracle of its kind? Then why do
problems remain? Modernism under discussion here faces
two fundamental problems. One is rooted in economics
and the second is the immunization of Afghan
traditional culture against premature modernism.

Geography and its Consequences

Afghanistan has an area of 700,000 square kilometers.
Mountains account for 75 percent of the land. People
live in cavernous valleys surrounded by towering
mountains. These elevations not only attest to a rough
nature, difficult passage and impediments to business,
but are also viewed as cultural and spiritual
fortresses among Afghan tribes. It is obvious why
Afghanistan lacks interstate routes.

The shortage of roads not only creates obstacles for
the fighters who seek to occupy Afghanistan, it stops
businessmen whose prosperity may become a means of
economic growth.  To the same degree that these
mountains obstruct foreign intrusion, they block
interference of other cultures and commercial
activities. A country that is 75 percent mountains has
problems creating consumer markets in its potential
industrial cities and in exporting agriculture
products to the cities. Despite the use of modern
weapons, wars take longer and find no conclusion.

In the past Afghanistan was a passageway for caravans
on the Silk Road traversing China through Balkh and
India through Kandahar. The discovery of waterways,
and then airways in the last century, changed
Afghanistan from an ancient commercial route to a dead
end. The old Silk Road was a passage of camels and
horses and didn't have the characteristics of a modern
road. Through the same winding roads Nadir Shah,
Alexander, Timur, and Mahmmod Ghaznavi went to India.
There used to be primitive wooden bridges, which have
been badly damaged in the past twenty years of war.

Perhaps today, after two decades of foreign and civil
war the people want the strongest party to win and
give a single direction to Afghanistan's historical
fate, no matter what. These same mountains, however,
are a hindrance. Perhaps, the true fighters of
Afghanistan are not its hungry people but the high
mountains that don't surrender. The Northern Alliance,
led by Ahmad Shah Massoud,* owes its survival to the
Panjshir valley. Conceivably, if Afghanistan was not
mountainous, the Soviets could have easily conquered
it; or it could have been prey for the Americans to
hunt down like the plains of Kuwait, and bring it
closer to the Central Asian markets.

Being mountainous increases both the costs of war and
reconstruction after peace. If Afghanistan was not so
rugged it would have had a different economical,
military, political, and cultural fate. Is this a
geographical misfortune? Imagine a fighter who has to
constantly climb up and down mountains. Suppose he
conquered all of Afghanistan. He then has to
constantly conquer the peaks to provide for his army.
These mountains have been sufficient to save
Afghanistan from foreign enemies and domestic friends.
 

Each tribe has defended the valley it was trapped in.
When the enemy left, again, everyone saw their valley
as the center of the world. The same mountains have
made agriculture very difficult. Only 15 percent of
the land is suited for agriculture and practically
just half of this is actually cultivated. The reason
for livestock farming is that the grasslands are on
the mountainsides or its environs.  It can be said
that Afghanistan is a victim of her own topography.
There are no routes in the mountains and road
construction is expensive. The roads if any, are
either military or narrow paths for smugglers. The
only trunk road passes around the borders. How can a
border road function like a primary artery in the body
of Afghanistan to resolve problems of social, cultural
and economic communications? The few interstate roads
that existed were destroyed in the war. To whose
advantage is it to pay for the costs of drilling these
tough and elevated mountains? For which potential
profit should this exorbitant cost be borne?

It is said that Afghanistan is full of unexplored
mines. From what route are these possibly exploitable
resources supposed to reach their destinations? Who
will be the first to invest in mines that will
generate profits in an uncertain future? Has the lack
of roads prevented the Soviets and Afghans from
excavating the mines?  On the other hand, Afghanistan
is a land of eternal hidden paths that are quite
efficient for smuggling drugs. There are as many
winding roads as you want for smuggling, but for
crushing the smugglers, you need straight ones that
don't exist. You can't know the infinite number of
paths and you can't attack a path every day. At the
most, you can await a caravan at a junction. A
smuggler was arrested around the city of Semnan in
Iran who had walked barefoot from Kandahar carrying a
sack of drugs. He had no skin on his soles when
arrested, but kept on walking.

In the mountains of Afghanistan water is more of a
calamity than a blessing. In winter it is freezing. It
floods in spring and in the summer its shortage yields
drought. This is the property of mountains without
dams. Uncontrolled waters and hard soil reduce
agricultural possibility. This is the geographical
picture of Afghanistan: arduous to cross, incapable of
cultivation, and with mines impossible to exploit due
to transport costs. The fact that some find
Afghanistan a museum of tribes, races, and languages
is because of the sheer difficulty of its geography.
Every tradition in this country has remained intact
because of isolation and lack of interference. It is
only natural for this rough and dry country to turn to
cultivation of poppy seeds to support its people.

In its present state the economy of Afghanistan can
keep its people half full without any economic
development. Wealth though, rests with the domestic
criminal organizations, or gets spent on unstable
Afghan regimes, and the people don't get a share of
it.  How do the Afghan people support themselves
beyond farming? It is either through construction work
in Iran, participation in political wars, or becoming
theology students in the Taliban schools.

Over twenty-five hundred Taliban schools, with a
capacity between three hundred to one thousand
students each, attract hungry orphans. In these
schools anybody can have a piece of bread and a bowl
of soup, read the Qur'an, memorize prayers, and later
join the Taliban forces. This is the only remaining
option for employment. It is because of this geography
that emigration, smuggling and war remain as
occupations and I'm wondering how the Northern
Alliance is going to meet the needs of the people
after a possible victory over the Taliban? Will it be
through continued war, development of poppy seeds, or
prayer for rain?

On the Iranian border the UN pays $20 to any Afghan
volunteering to return to Afghanistan. They are taken
by bus to the first cities inside Afghanistan or
dropped around the borders. Interestingly, due to lack
of jobs in Afghanistan, the Afghans quickly come back
and if not recognized, go in line again to get another
$20. The jobless Afghans turn every solution into an
occupation. And as much as war may be a profession,
few Afghan leaders have died pursuing it.  Continued
war provides opportunity for the U.S., the Russians
and the six neighboring countries to give aid to
forces loyal to them. This largesse is normally aimed
at continuing a war or balancing power, but in the
case of Afghanistan it merely creates jobs. Let's not
forget that there's been a two-year drought and
livestock have died as a result.

The mortality is predicted by the UN to be one million
within the next few months. The war has nothing to do
with this. It is poverty and famine. Whenever farming
has been threatened by a shortage of water, emigration
has increased, and wars have worsened. The average
life expectancy of an Afghan has been calculated at
41.5 years and the mortality rate for children under
two years of age was between 182 to 200 deaths per
1,000. The average longevity was 34 years in 1960 and
in 2000 was pegged at 41. The reality however is that
in recent years it has gone down to even lower than
what it was in 1960.

I never forget those nights of filming Kandahar. While
our team searched the deserts with flashlights, we
would see dying refugees like herds of sheep left in
the desert. When we took those that we thought were
dying of cholera to hospitals in Zabol, we realized
that they were dying of hunger. Since those days and
nights of seeing so many people starving to death, I
haven't been able to forgive myself for eating any
meals.  Between 1986 and 1989 the Afghans had about
twenty-two million sheep. That is one sheep per
person. This has traditionally been the main wealth of
a farming nation such as Afghanistan. This wealth was
lost in the recent famine. Imagine the situation of a
farming nation without livestock. The original tragedy
of Afghanistan today is poverty and the only way to
resolve the problems is through economic
rehabilitation.

If I had gone to support the Mujahedin, instead of the
true freedom fighters who are ordinary people
struggling to stay alive, I would have come back. If I
were president of a neighboring country, I would
encourage economic relations with Afghanistan in lieu
of political-military interventions. God forbid if I
was in the place of God, I would bless Afghanistan
with something else that would benefit this forgotten
nation. And I write this without believing it will
have any impact in this era, which is very different
than that of Sa'di's when, "all men are limbs of one
body."

Dr. Kamal Hossein, the UN Humanitarian Adviser for
Afghanistan affairs from Bangladesh, visited our
office in the summer of 2000 and told us that he had
been reporting quite futilely to the UN for ten years.
He had come to assist me in making a movie that
perhaps would awaken the world. I said: "I'm looking
for that which will affect."  It must be added that
Afghanistan has not so much suffered from foreign
interference as it has from indifference. Again if
Afghanistan were Kuwait with a surplus of oil income,
the story would have been different. But Afghanistan
has no oil and the neighboring countries deport its
underpaid laborers. It's only natural when
occupational options fail, as explained earlier in the
text, the only remaining choices are smuggling,
joining the Taliban, or falling down in a corner in
Herat, Bamian, Kabul, or Kandahar and dying for the
world's ignorance.

Once, I happened to be in a camp around Zabol that was
filled with illegal immigrants. I wasn't sure if it
was a camp or a prison. The Afghans who had fled their
homes because of famine or Taliban assaults had been
refused asylum and were waiting to be returned to
Afghanistan. It all seemed legal and rational to that
point. People, who for any reason enter a country
illegally and are afterward refused, get deported. But
these particular people were dying of hunger. We had
ended up there to choose extras for my film. I asked
the authorities and found out that the camp could not
afford to feed so many people and they hadn't eaten
for a week. They had only water to drink.

We offered to provide meals. They wished we'd go there
every day.  We brought food for four hundred Afghans
ranging from one-month-old babies to eighty-year-old
men. Most of them were little kids who had fainted of
hunger in their mothers' arms. For an hour, we were
crying and distributing bread and fruits. The
authorities expressed grief and regret and said that
it took a long time for budget approvals and kept
saying that the flow of hungry refugees was far
greater than what they could manage. This is the story
of a country that's been ravaged by its own nature,
history, economy, politics, and the unkindness of its
neighbors. An Afghan poet who was being deported from
Iran back to Afghanistan expressed his feelings in a
poem and left:

I came on foot, I'll leave on foot.
The stranger who had no piggy bank, will leave.
And the child who had no dolls, will leave.
The spell on my exile will be broken tonight.
And the table that had been empty will be folded.
In suffering, I wandered around the horizons.
It is me who everyone has seen in wandering.
What I do not have I'll lay down and leave.
I came on foot, I'll leave on foot.

The Role of Drug Production

In modern day economy, every supply is based on a
demand. The production of drugs everywhere meets the
need for its consumption. This universal market
includes both poor and advanced countries such as
India, the Netherlands, and the United States.
According to UN reporting in 2000, in the late 90's
about 180 million people worldwide were using drugs.
Based on the same report, 90 percent of illegal opium,
as well as 80 percent of heroin, is produced in two
countries, one of which is Afghanistan. Why?

Although Afghanistan earns half a billion dollars from
drug production the actual turnover for these drugs is
$80 billion. In transit to the rest of the world, the
mark-up stretches 160 times. Who gets the $80 billion?
 For example, heroin enters Tajikistan at one price
and exits at twice that much. The same goes for
Uzbekistan. By the time drugs reach consumers in the
Netherlands, they cost 160 to 200 times the original
price. The money ends up with the various criminal
organizations that manipulate the politics of those
countries en route.  The secret budget of many Central
Asian countries is supplied through drug traffic,
otherwise, how can smugglers who walk all the way from
Kandahar for example, be the prime beneficiaries of
this wealth? How can we at all consider them the true
smugglers of drugs?

If it weren't for the extremely high drug profits
Iran, for example, could have ordered a half a billion
dollars worth of wheat to Afghanistan as an incentive
to stop planting poppy seeds. Yet the $79.5 billion
profit is far too valuable, for the drug smugglers and
their allied forces, to dispose of poppy seeds.
Ironically, the Afghan drug producer is not himself a
consumer. Drug use is prohibited but its production is
legitimate. Its religious justification is sending
deadly poisons to the enemies of Islam in Europe and
America. This reasoning is nicely paradoxical given
the economic significance of drugs on the governmental
budget of Afghanistan.

The total drug turnover in the world is $400 billion
and Afghans are the victims of this market. Why is
Afghanistan's share only 1/800 of the total? Whatever
the answer, the market needs a place with little civil
organization, but which is a cornucopia of drug
production. If there were roads in Afghanistan instead
of obscure paths, if the war ceased and the economy
flourished, and if other incentives replaced the half
a billion dollars, then what would happen to the $400
billion market?

The secret budget of Central Asian countries is
supplied through drugs. That explains the strong
incentive for the world to remain indifferent towards
Afghanistan's chronic economic condition. Why should
Afghanistan become stable? How could it possibly
compensate for the $80 billion directly generated from
its soil? Drugs are an interesting business for many.
Just a few months ago when I was in Afghanistan, it
was said that every day an airplane full of drugs
flies directly from Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf
states.

In 1986, when I was doing research for the making of
The Cyclist, I took a road trip from Mirjaveh in
Pakistan to Quetta and Peshawar in Pakistan. It took
me a few days. When I entered Mirjaveh, I got on a
colorful bus of the same kind that you might have seen
in The Cyclist. The bus was filled with all kinds of
strange people. People with long thin beards, turbans
on the head and long dresses. At first, I wasn't aware
that the bus roof was filled with drugs. The bus drove
across dirt expanses without roads. Everywhere was
filled with dust and the wheels would sink into the
soft soil. We arrived at a surreal gate like the ones
in Dali's paintings. It was a gate that neither
separated nor connected anything from or to anything.
It was just an imaginary gate erected in the middle of
the desert. The bus stopped at the gate.

There then appeared a group of bikers who asked our
driver to step down. They talked a little and then
brought a sack of money and counted it with the
driver. Two of the bikers came and took our bus. Our
driver and his assistant took the money and left on
the bikes. The new driver announced that he was now
the owner of the bus and everything in it. We then
found out that together with the bus we had been sold.
This transaction was repeated every few hours and we
were sold to several smugglers. We found out that a
particular party controlled each leg of the route and
every time the bus was sold, the price increased.
First it was one sack of money then it went up to two
and three towards the end. There were also caravans
that carried Dushka heavy machine guns on the backs of
their camels. If you eliminated our bus and the arms
on camelback, you were in the primitive depths of
history. Again we would arrive in places where they
sold arms. Bullets were sold in bags as if they were
beans. Kilos of bullets were weighed on scales and
exchanged.

Well, how would the world's drug trade take place if
such places didn't exist?  I had gone to Khorasan and
along the border was looking for a site for filming.
By sunset the villages near the border would be
evacuated. The villagers would flee to other cities
for fear of smugglers. They also encouraged us to take
flight. Rumors of insecurity were so widespread that
few cars passed after sundown. In the darkness of the
night, the roads were ready for the passage of
smuggling caravans. According to witnesses the
caravans are comprised of groups of five to one
hundred people. Their ages range from twelve to thirty
years. Each carries a sack of drugs on their back and
some carry hand-held rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs
to protect the caravan.

If drugs are not flown by airplane, they go in
containers and if otherwise, they are carried by human
mules. Imagine the enormity of events these caravans
pass through from one country to another until for
example, they reach Amsterdam. Again, imagine what
fear and horror they create among the people in
different regions to maintain that $80 billion trade.
I asked an official in Taibad about the number of
killings committed by the smugglers. The figures say
105 were either killed or kidnapped in two years. Over
80 have been returned. I quickly divided 105 by the
104 weeks of the two years. It equals one person per
week. I reckoned that if these numbers render a region
so unsafe that people prefer not to stay in their own
villages and flee to other cities by night, how do we
expect the people of Afghanistan to stay put?

In the past twenty years, they have had one killing
every five minutes. Should they stay in Afghanistan
and not migrate to our country? How can we think that
if we deport them, the lack of safety in Afghanistan
will not bring them back? I inquired of the officials
stationed on the roads about the causes for
kidnappings and killings. Apparently, the caravans on
the Iranian side of the border deal with the
villagers. When an Iranian smuggler does not pay money
on time, he or one of his family members is kidnapped
and they are returned once the money is exchanged.
Again, I realize that this aggression also has an
economic basis. Near the Dogharoon border the customs
agents were saying that the region had been unsafe for
eight years but the papers had been reporting about it
for only two years. The reason for the relative wave
of openness is related to the new situation of
newspapers in Iran.

*Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance in
northern Afghanistan, was murdered by unknown
assailants on September 9, 2001.

Emigration and its Consequences

Except for seasonal movement with his livestock, the
emigrant Afghan farmer never traveled abroad until
about two decades ago. For this reason, every trip,
even a limited one, has left serious marks on the fate
of Afghans. For example, Amanullah Khan and a group of
students that had traveled to the West for studying,
became the pioneers of Afghanistan's unsuccessful
experiment with modernism.

The emigration of 30 percent of Afghanistan's
population in the recent decades however, has not been
for academic pursuits. War and poverty forced them to
leave and now, their large population has exhausted
their hosts. The emigration of 2.5 million Afghans to
Iran and 3 million to Pakistan has created grave
concerns for both countries. When I objected to
officials in charge of deporting Afghans that they
were our guests, the reply I heard was that this
twenty-year party had gone on too long. If it
continued in Khorasan, Sistan, and Baluchestan
provinces, our national identity would be threatened
in the said regions and we would face even more
intense crises such as demands for independence of
those areas or even increased insecurity at the
borders.

Unlike Pakistan, which prepared Taliban schools to
train Islamic Mujahedin, Iranian society did not plan
any schools to train Afghans. During the making of The
Cyclist, I used to go to Afghan neighborhoods to find
actors. At that time, one of the Afghan officials told
me that they expected the Iranian universities to
accept Afghan students so that if the Soviets left
Afghanistan, they would have ministers with at least
bachelor degrees. Otherwise, with a bunch of fighters
you can wage war but not govern the country.

Later on, a few Afghans were accepted in Iranian
universities but none of them are willing to return
home today. They state their reasons as being
insecurity and hunger. One of them mentioned that the
highest level of living in Afghanistan is lower than
the lowest level in Iran. I heard in Herat that the
monthly salary of Herat's governor (in 2000) was $15
per month. That's fifty cents a day or 4,000 Iranian
rials. Because of widespread Afghan emigration, human
smuggling has become a new occupation for Iranian
smugglers. Afghan families that reach the borders have
to go a long way to arrive in Tehran and since their
arrest is likely in Zabol, Zahedan, Kerman or any
other city en route, they leave their fate in the
hands of pickup-driving smugglers. The smugglers
request 1,000,000 rials for every refugee hauled to
Tehran.

Since in 99 percent of the cases, the Afghan family
lacks this much money, a couple of thirteen to
fourteen-year-old girls are taken hostage and the rest
of the family is secreted into Tehran through back
roads. The girls are kept until their family finds
jobs and pays the debt. In most cases the money is
never provided. A ten-member family with a ten million
rial debt has to pay the interest as well after three
months. Consequently, a great many Afghan girls are
either kept as hostages around the borders or become
the personal belonging of the smugglers. An official
in the region related that the number of girl hostages
in just one of those cities has been approximated at
24,000.

A friend of mine who was building a house in Tehran
told me about his Afghan workers. He had noticed that
two Iranian men showed up once in while and got most
of their money. When asked, the Afghans said that they
were brought for free on the condition that they pay
the smugglers later. They also saved a part of their
money to take back to their families in Afghanistan in
case they were deported. The situation is a bit
different for refugees in Pakistan.  Those who come to
Iran are Hazarehs. These people are Farsi speaking
Shiites. The common language and religion inclines
them towards Iran. Their misfortune is their
distinctive appearance. Their Mongol features subject
them to quick recognition among Iranians.

The Pashtoon who goes to Pakistan, however, blends in
with Pakistanis because of common language, religion
and ethnicity. Although the Shiite Hazarehs find
Pakistan more liberal than Iran, job opportunities in
Iran are more appealing to them than the freedom in
Pakistan. It means that bread has priority over
freedom. You must first have food in order to search
for freedom.

As a result of not finding a suitable occupation, a
hungry Sunni/Pashtoon Afghan is immediately attracted
to the theological schools ready to offer food and
shelter. In fact, unlike Iran, which never dealt with
Afghan refugees in an organized manner, Pakistan
promoted, organized, and put into play the Taliban
government for a variety of reasons. The first is the
Durand line. Before Pakistani independence from India,
Afghanistan shared borders with India and serious
disputes ensued between the two over the Pashtoonestan
region.

The British drew the Durand line and divided the
region between the two countries, on the condition
that after one hundred years, Afghanistan regain
control over the Indian part of Pashtoonestan as well.
Later on, when Pakistan declared independence from
India, the Indian half of Pashtoonestan became half of
Pakistan. According to international law, Pakistan was
supposed to cede Pashtoonestan back to Afghanistan
some six years ago. How would Pakistan, which still
has claims over Kashmir agree to give half of its land
area to Afghanistan?

The best solution was to raise hungry Afghan Mujahedin
to control Afghanistan. The Pakistan-trained Taliban
would naturally no longer harbor ambitions of
recovering Pashtoonestan from their patron. No wonder
the Taliban appeared just as the one-hundred-year
deadline drew to a close. From a distance the Taliban
appear to be irrational and dangerous fundamentalists.
When you look at them closely, you see hungry Pashtoon
orphans whose occupation is that of a theology student
and whose impetus for attending school is hunger. When
you review the appearance of the Taliban you see the
national political interests of Pakistan.

If fundamentalism was the reason for the independence
of Pakistan from Gandhi's democratic India, the same
applies for Pakistan's survival and expansion at the
expense of Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistan's
significance for the world prior to disintegration of
the Soviet Union was based on its being the first
defensive stronghold of the West against the communist
East. With Soviet disintegration, to the same degree
that the Afghan fighter lost his heroic position in
the western media, Pakistan also lost its strategic
importance and came face-to-face with an employment
crisis.

According to the rules of sociology, every
organization buys and sells something. Given this
definition, armies sell their military services to
their own or other nations and governments. What was
Pakistan's national occupation in the world in
relation to the West? Playing the role of an
apparently eastern army but being possessed of a
western internal conviction and selling military
services to the United States. With Soviet
disintegration, the demand for Pakistan's military
services for the West also diminished.

To which market then was Pakistan to present its
military services and maintain this vital national
occupation? That is why Pakistan created the Taliban:
to have covert control of Afghanistan and stop the
Afghans from demanding the cession of Pashtoonestan.
The fact that Pakistan, first and foremost, faces an
employment crisis, is rooted in this reasoning. If as
a filmmaker I cannot make my films in my homeland,
I'll go elsewhere for my occupation. Armies are the
same way. For any big war effort, enormous reserves of
a nation's energy are directed towards forming
military organizations that dispense military
services. Once the war is over, these units look for
other markets to maintain their services. If they
can't find a market, they become discouraged and
either stage a coup d'etat or transform into economic
foundations. Examples of the latter are found in
countries that have used their military organizations
to control traffic or help with agriculture or road
construction.

In the broader world, every once in a while, wars are
fomented to create demands for military materiel and
take government purchase orders. Let's go back to the
issue of emigration. Unlike Iran, Pakistan used Afghan
refugees as religio-political students and founded the
Taliban army.

Before the Soviet invasion, an Afghan was a farmer.
With the Soviet attack, each Afghan turned into a
Mujahed to defend his valley. Organizations and
parties were formed. With the Soviet retreat, every
sect or group began fighting another. Six neighboring
countries, the United States and the Soviet Union each
sought their own mercenaries among the military
groups. The civil war intensified so much that in two
years, the damages were greater than in the longer
period of the Russian presence. People were fed up
with civil war and when Pakistan dispatched the army
of the Taliban holding white flags with the motto of
public disarmament and peace, people
welcomed them. In a short time, the Taliban had
control over most of Afghanistan. It was then that the
Taliban's Pakistani roots went on display.

The Taliban have always been criticized for their
fundamentalism but little has been said about the
reasons for their appearance. Although the Herati poet
who had come to Iran on foot, returned to Afghanistan
on foot, the orphan who had walked to Peshawar in
Pakistan, returned to conquer Afghanistan driving
Toyotas offered by the Arab countries.  How could
Pakistan, which had subsistence problems with its own
people, afford to feed, train and equip the Taliban?

With the help of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia
or the United Arab Emirates, who as Iran's competitors
had previously created tensions in Mecca, and who were
looking for a religious power that could compete with
Iran's. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, who once felt
their modern interests were threatened by the motto of
return to Islam, thought that if there is to be any
return to Islam, why not return to a more regressive
Islam like that of the Taliban. If there's a contest
for returning and the winner is one who regresses the
most, why not go back to the most primitive state
namely Talibanism!

Who are the Taliban?

According to sociologists, the nation's demand for
security from its governments is greater than any
other consideration. Welfare, development, and freedom
come next. After the Soviet retreat, the outbreak of
intense civil war created nationwide insecurity and
the country was placed in extremely perilous straits.
Each group aimed at providing its own security through
continuous fighting. None of them however were able to
provide safety for the nation. The mocking irony of
this period was that every one tried to insure
security by making the country unsafe. The Taliban,
with their claim to be harbingers of peace and their
strategy of disarmament, quickly succeeded in winning
popular consent. The unsuccessful efforts of other
groups were centered on offering war and insecurity.
In Herat, I inquired about the Taliban.

The reply I heard from the shopkeepers was that prior
to the Taliban their shops were robbed daily by armed
and hungry men. Even those who opposed the Taliban
were happy with the security they brought.  Security
was established in two ways. One was the disarmament
of the public and the other severe punishments such as
cutting the hands of thieves. These punishments are so
harsh, intolerable, and quick that if the twenty
thousand hungry Afghans in Herat saw a
piece of bread before them, nobody would dare take it.
 

I saw truck drivers who had traveled to and from
Afghanistan for two years and had never locked their
vehicles. Nothing was ever stolen from them either.
Afghans were in need not only of financial security;
practical safety and freedom from harassment have
always been concerns as well. I heard different
stories about how prior to the Taliban people's lives
and chastity were violated by other tribes and sects.
Disarmament and execution by stoning, however, have
reduced the number of such violations.

Today, when you enter Afghanistan, you see people
lying around on street corners. Nobody has energy to
move and no arms to fight with. Fear of punishment
stops them from committing crimes. The only remedy is
to stay and die while humanity is overtaken by
indifference. This is not Sa'di's time when "all men
are limbs of one body".  The only one whose heart had
not turned to stone yet, was the Buddha statue of
Bamian. With all his grandeur, he felt humiliated by
the enormity of this tragedy and broke down. Buddha's
state of needlessness and calmness became ashamed
before a nation in need of bread and it fell. Buddha
shattered to inform the world of all this poverty,
ignorance, oppression and mortality. But negligent
humanity only heard about the demolition of the Buddha
statue.

A Chinese proverb says: "You point your finger at the
moon, the fool stares at your finger." Nobody saw the
dying nation that Buddha was pointing to. Are we
supposed to stare at all the different means of
communication rather than at what they are intended to
convey? Is the ignorance of the Taliban or their
fundamentalism deeper than the earth's ignorance
towards the ominous fate of a nation such as
Afghanistan?

For filming the starving Afghans, I called Dr. Kamal
Hussein, the UN representative from Bangladesh. I told
him I wanted to get permission to go to north
Afghanistan (controlled by the Northern Alliance) and
Kandahar (controlled by the Taliban). It was decided
that a small group would go and eventually just two of
us (my son and I) received approval to travel with
only a small video camera. We were to be permitted to
go to Islamabad, Pakistan and take a small
ten-passenger UN airplane that flew once a week to the
north and once a week to the south.

It took two weeks for the UN office to call and
inquire when it was convenient for us to depart. We
were ready but they said that it would take another
month. "Since it will get colder in a month and more
people will be dying, it would make your film more
interesting," they said. They recommended February. I
asked, "More interesting?" They replied that perhaps
it would provoke the conscience of the world. I didn't
know what to say. We were silent for a while.

Then I asked whether or not we could go to both north
and south. The Taliban didn't agree. They are not too
fond of journalists. I made a promise to only film
those dying of hunger. Again the Taliban did not
approve. I explained that I needed another invitation
from the UN to reenter Pakistan. Later, I received a
fax stating that I had to go to Pakistan's embassy in
Tehran. I was happy because I had previously obtained
a visa to Pakistan from the embassy to bring costumes
for Kandahar from Peshawar. I visited the embassy and,
at first, was not received warmly. After a little
while I was called and a very respectable lady and a
gentleman directed me to a room. I spent twenty
minutes in that room with them. fifteen of which they
talked about my daughter Samira and her international
success in cinema. While they avoided the main issue
they asked why I applied through the UN for a visa and
told me that it would have been better to have applied
directly to them.

In addition, they were not in favor of a film that
misrepresented the Taliban government. They preferred
that I go to Pakistan rather than Afghanistan. I felt
like I was in the embassy of the Taliban. I asked if
they had seen The Cyclist and told them I had made a
part of it in Peshawar and that it is not a political
film. I told them that my intentions were humanitarian
and that I wanted to help the Afghans, especially with
regards to hunger. I told them that my film was about
the crisis of employment and hunger. They said that we
have 2.5 million Afghans in Iran. Why not film them?

It was useless to continue the discussion. They kept
my passport and I was kindly asked to leave. A few
days later, I received my passport with a statement
saying that I might have a visa to go to Pakistan as a
tourist, but not to film, nor to go to Afghanistan.
When I left the embassy, all of what I have read or
heard about the Taliban passed before my eyes. I
remember being escorted out of a Taliban school in
Peshawar as soon as my Iranian identity became known.
And I remember a day in Peshawar, while filming The
Cyclist, when I was arrested and handcuffed. I don't
know why every time I intend to make a film about
Afghanistan I end up in Pakistan!

People tell me to be careful. There is always the
threat of kidnapping or terrorism at the borders. The
Taliban are reputed to assassinate suspected opponents
en route between Zahedan and Zabol. I keep saying my
subject is humanitarian not political. Eventually, one
day when we were finished filming near the border, as
I was walking around, I came across a group that had
come either to kill or kidnap me. They asked me about
Makhmalbaf. I was sporting a long thin beard and
wearing Afghan dress. A Massoudi hat with a shawl
covering it and half of my face made me look like an
Afghan. I sent them the other way and began running. I
could not figure out whether they had been dispatched
by a political group or if smugglers sent them to
extort money.

Let me go back to the issue of security. The Taliban,
under the auspices of public disarmament and
implementation of punishments such as amputation of
the hands of thieves, stoning adulterers, and
execution of opponents have brought an apparent
security to Afghanistan. If there is fighting
somewhere, Shariat Radio (Voice of Taliban), which
only has a two-hour program daily, will not announce
it just to maintain a sense of national security. They
say, for example, that the people of Takhar welcomed
the Taliban, but you know it means that the Taliban
attacked and conquered Takhar. The rest is just news
about Friday prayer, or the amputation of the hand of
some bandit in Bamian, the stoning to death of a young
adulterer in Kandahar, or punishment of some barbers
who cut a few teenagers' hair in the western style of
infidels. Whatever it is, with all the punishments and
propaganda, a sense of national security suffuses
Afghanistan.

Afghanistan lacks the economic strength for the
Taliban to create public welfare, yet the Taliban are
the only government that can bring security to the
country. Those who fight the Taliban bring threats to
security and those who support them reason that
Afghans must rule in Afghanistan. Whoever is to become
the ruler of Afghanistan must first bring security to
the nation. Any kind of war gives way to insecurity
and because Afghanistan is inclined towards tribalism,
with the coming of anybody to power, security is again
threatened. It is better to first recognize whoever
aims to rule Afghanistan, so that he can save
Afghanistan from its hunger crisis and then move on.

The same group finds criticism of the Taliban
irrelevant to the lack of freedom in Afghanistan,
because an insecure and famished nation seeks welfare
more than freedom and development.  In reply to the
question of what the Taliban are, it must be said that
politically, the Taliban are an instrument for
government supported by Pakistan. Individually, they
are starving youth turned students and trained in
Taliban schools in Pakistan. They first entered the
premises for a loaf of bread and later exited to
occupy political-military positions in Afghanistan.

As viewed by one political group, the Taliban are
protagonists of fundamentalism in the region, from the
viewpoint of another political group, they are the
same Pashtoons who have been the only rulers of
Afghanistan since the time of Ahmad Abdali. Today,
they have reasserted 250 years of their power after an
era of internal chaos. They claim that in the past
quarter millennium, except for a nine-month period
when the Tajiks ruled and another two years when the
Tajik Rabbani governed, the Pashtoons have always had
control, and Afghanistan needs their experience in
governing.

I hardly understand these issues. My job is to make
films and if I have delved into these matters, it is
because I want to write my script based on a more
precise analysis. The further I go though I find the
case more complicated. When the United States found it
necessary, it retook Kuwait from Iraq in three days.
Why, however, with all its touting of modernism, does
it not initiate an action to save the ten million
women who have no schools or social presence and are
trapped under the burqa? Why doesn't it stop this
primitiveness that has emerged in modern times? Does
it not have the power or does it lack the incentive?
As I've already said, unlike Kuwait, Afghanistan lacks
precious resources and surplus income.

I hear another answer too. If the United States
supports the Taliban for a few more years, the Taliban
will present to the world such an ugly image of
political Islam that it will make everyone immune to
it, just as everyone in Afghanistan was made immune to
modernism by Amanullah Khan. If the revolutionary and
reformative interpretations of Islam are equated with
Taliban's regressive interpretation, then the world
will become forever immune to the expansion of Islam.
Some people find this analysis too shabby a cliche.
They tell me to let go and I will.

The Most Imprisoned Women in the World

Afghan society is a male-dominant society. It can be
claimed that the rights of ten million Afghan women
who make up half of the population in Afghanistan, are
less than that of the weakest unknown Afghan tribe. No
tribe is an exception in this regard. The fact that
Afghan women, according even to the Tajiks, don't have
the right to vote in elections is the least that can
be said about them. With the coming of the Taliban,
girls' schools were closed, and for a long time women
were not allowed in the streets. More tragically, even
before the Taliban, only one out of every twenty women
was able to read and write. This statistic indicates
that Afghan culture denied education to 95 percent of
women, and the Taliban deprived the remaining 5
percent. Realistically then, should we ask: did the
Taliban change Afghan culture, or, was Afghan culture
the cause of the Taliban's appearance?

When I was in Afghanistan, I saw women with burqas on
their heads begging in the streets or shopping in
second hand stores. What caught my attention were the
ladies who brought out their hands from under the
burqas and asked little peddler boys to polish their
nails. For a long time, I wondered why they didn't buy
nail polish to use at home? Later I found out it was
the cheapest way to do it. Buying nail polish was more
expensive than a one-time use. I told myself again
that this is a good sign that women under burqas still
like living and despite their poverty, care about
their beauty to that extent. Later on, however, I
reached the conclusion that it is not fair to isolate
and imprison a woman in an environment or a certain
costume and be content that she still puts on make up.

An Afghan woman has to maintain herself so that she
won't be forgotten in the competition with her rivals.
Polygamy is quite common among young men too, and has
turned many Afghan homes into harems. Although the
marriage allowance is so high that getting married
means buying a woman, I saw old men, while I was
filming, give away ten-year-old girls, and with the
marriage price that they received consider marrying
other ten-year-old girls for themselves. It seems that
limited capital is exchanged from one hand to the
other to replace girls from one house to the other.
Among them there are women who have an age difference
of thirty to fifty years with their husbands.

These women mostly live in the same house or even the
same room and not only have they surrendered but they
have also gotten used to these customs. I had brought
a lot of dresses and burqas from Afghanistan and
Pakistan for my film. Many of the women who agreed to
be in the film as extras after strenuous and lengthy
persuasion, requested that we gave them burqas instead
of money. One of them wanted a burqa for her
daughter's wedding, and I, fearing that burqas may
become popular in Iran, didn't give any to anyone.
Once when we had asked some Afghan women to be in the
film, their husband told us that he was too chaste to
show his women. I told him that we would film his
women with their burqas on but he said that the
viewers watching the movie know that it is a woman
under the burqa and that would contradict chastity.

Time and again I ask myself, did the Taliban bring the
burqas or did the burqas bring the Taliban? Do
politics affect change in culture or does culture
bring politics? In Niatak camp in Iran, the Afghans
themselves closed down the public bathhouse reasoning
that anyone who passes along the walls knowing that
the opposite sex is naked behind those walls, is
engaged in a sin.  At present there are no woman
doctors in Afghanistan and if a woman wants to see a
doctor she has to bring her son, husband, or father,
and through them talk to the doctor. As far as
marriage, the father or brother, not the bride, say
yes.

Afghan Aggression
cording to Freud, human aggression stems from human
animalism and civilizations only cover this animalism
with a thin veneer. This thin skin splits at the snap
of a finger. Violence exists in both East and West,
what is different is the style not the reality of its
existence.  What's the difference between death by
decapitation using knives, daggers, or swords, and
dying by bullets, grenades, mines, and missiles? In
most cases, criticism of aggression is really the
disapproval of the means of aggression. The death of
one million Afghans as a result of injustice in the
world is not regarded by the world as aggression. The
death of 10 percent of the Afghan population by civil
war and war with the Soviets is not perceived as
aggression, but the decapitation of someone with a
sword will long be the main headline of satellite TV
news.

It is naturally fearsome and horrible to see a person
being decapitated but why doesn't the death of people
every day by land mines give us the same feeling? Why
are knives aggressive but not mines? What is
criticized in the modern West is the form of Afghan
aggression, and not the substance. The West can create
a tragic story for a statue, but for death by millions
it suffices with statistics. As Stalin put it: "The
death of one person is tragedy, but the death of one
million is only a statistic."

Since the day I saw a little Afghan girl twelve years
of age, the same age as my own daughter Hanna,
fluttering in my arms of hunger, I've tried to bring
forth the tragedy of this hunger, but I always ended
up giving statistics. Oh God! Why have I become so
powerless, like Afghanistan? I feel like going to that
same poem, to that same vagrancy and like that Herati
poet, get lost somewhere, or collapse out of shame
like the Buddha of Bamian.

I came on foot, I'll leave on foot
The same stranger who had no piggy bank, will leave.
And the child who had no dolls, will leave.
The spell on my exile will be broken tonight.
And the table that had been empty, will be folded.
In suffering, I wandered around the horizons.
It is me, who everyone has seen in wandering.
What I do not have, I'll lay and leave.
I came on foot, I'll leave on foot.
 

June 20, 2001 by Mohsen Makhmalbaf as published in The Iranian (Tehran)